Friday, October 30, 2009

I wanted to post an entry today, but we're at our month end in the office which means I'm doing number crunching. While I'm nursing a 6 hour old coffee and a massive crick in my neck, here is a blast from MySpace past (where I would randomly blog when I was bored.)

September 11, 2006

Lobster Cappucino?!

It's true. There is something out there called lobster cappucino. Everyone I had asked over 2 months had the same response: a confused expression with a nose wrinkle and an uttered "ew." No one knew what it was, but it sounded gross.

I found it vaguely disturbing, but I now understand.

It's a thicker lobster bisque served in an espresso cup.

That's all.

And they charge something like $20 per person to have this at your wedding's cocktail hour.

As you can probably guess, I was in the middle of wedding planning. We didn't end up at whatever facility this was because any place that offers lobster in an espresso cup is way to frou-frou for my steak and potatoes, Budweiser budget family.

The takeaway from this however is that lobster and caffeine don't mix. Fancy or not, do not put them together.

Have a great weekend and if you are participating in NaNoWriMo - good luck!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Instead of doing prewriting during office downtime today, I opted to play with Wordle. I first learned about this awesome app from my friend Danielle. Since then, it's been popping up in the tweets and blogs of people I follow.

Courtesy of TweetStats, I found out that I can make a word cloud with my Twitter account. What a terrific way to find out what I tweet about!

(Of course, since my work machine is locked down like a nun's you-know-what, it's taken me much longer than necessary to get the images on this page.)

The Wordle on up top shows what I tweet only while the one on the right includes I respond to. I find it pretty funny that The Great White Beast (more commonly known as Lucky) is one of the more dominant topics of my Twitter stream in both cases.

I'm fascinated by this because I can see what's most on my mind and how much of a one-track mind I do have. This can be explained though.

@replies. The two dominant replies are to two of my friends, so that makes sense. Of course, we could just as easily text each other, right?

White, Stripey & Cats. Blaming it on not allowing to have any as a child while all my friends had one, I love cats. Of course I have two. I'd have more if the apartment was bigger. Lucky and Cheyenne are always doing something that fascinates me. It might not have the same appeal to you, but you're not me.Twitpic. With the previous category, of course I have to take pictures of how awesome these two are. Twitpic is very enabling that way. The Twitpic feed is basically of the cats. Most of the pictures on my cell are of the cats too.

I might as well admit it now: the cats are my hobby.

Moving on.

Writing. This one should be explanatory if you're reading this. But if you're new, I'll fill you in. I write. I tweet about what I do when I'm not watching the cats. That is usually writing. I think most of these ones had to do with the last FALLING TO NORMAL rewrite.

Nemesis. An older gentleman in my critique group that submits his work(s)-in-progress as frequently as I do. I spend a lot of time wondering what the hell he's talking about.

This is how I spend my Twitter time. I wonder how this will change as the year pushes on.

Monday, October 26, 2009

This post started to be about music, but that one will come later in the week. After I compile my playlist for the yet to be titled novel.

Yesterday I went to a meet and greet for people participating in NaNoWriMo in the Boston area. With the exception of a writer's conference, it was the largest group of writers I have seen in one room. About 30. Imagine having that many writers together all in the planning stages of a novel that they're going to write the following week.

Sound intimidating to you? To me, it was comforting. And from the amount of people who do this yearly, a lot of people think the same.

Now that there are 6 days until launch, I'm beginning to stress. There is still a lot of prewriting that needs to be done. Character sketches, plot point tweaking, research - all things I never do. I know that I'm not the only one feeling this odd self-inflicted pressure.

November also marks the beginning of social season hell. If the two women I sat with during yesterday's meet and greet are any indication, November is busy for everyone: work deadlines, holidays, etc.

If you're doing NaNoWriMo or have done it, what were your survival strategies for the prewriting and in process writing?

Next month I'm doing my first ever marathon. I haven't trained for it, nor am I really built for it. Good thing I'm not doing a physical marathon. What I am doing is participating in my first ever NaNoWriMo.

With this cherry getting popped, so is a lot of others. Like, plot cards. Authoress has talked about them and Holly Lisle has a virtual course. Son of a bitch, it worked. I have a full main plot to work off of for November. No true subplots, but since the goal is to write the shitty first draft, I'm not too worried.

The shitty first draft is a first for me too. In talking with my husband last night, I realized that I've never allowed myself a true shit draft. I'm an edit-as-I-go girl, which explains why it's taken me so long to write what I have. (Classic example was over the summer both my husband and I undertook a challenge to write a short story in 400 words. He finished his in 1 hour. It took me all weekend.)

I've also gone more organized this time around with a true novel reference book. I had read on Xtreme Life about how to create one and thought "why not?" All my projects have a notebook or several scraps of paper with notes, but nothing that can be organized or portable; it wouldn't be much of a leap. And I'm using it. I worked in it for an hour last night. I am shocked.

I think part of the whole NaNoWriMo experience for me will be that - experimenting. It's so easy to get locked down in what's familiar that the short sightedness doesn't allow you to find something that might work better.

In addition to this, I'm still working on my YA venture - FALLING TO NORMAL. I've entered a contest via Kidlit.com for their first ever query contest. I'm excited and still hopeful that something WONDERFUL will happen regarding Cheyenne and crew before I buy a new calendar. (Something wonderful = a personalized rejection letter.)

Hubby has pointed out that I haven't queried since summer. He has volunteered on agent researching, which is awesome and supportive. I told him such and added "you might want to research the querying process first, so you can understand what's acceptable."

His desire to research got replaced by the new video game he picked up.

If you read my notes to Blog, you'll see that I'm planning on actually doing updates. That's going to be a challenge as well. Keep checking pack to see the following questions answered:

You really need to step it up. And let's be honest - it's time for a new title. The title change might be enough for me to pay attention to you. To continue in the honesty vein, it's you. Not me.

What's that, you say? You're disagreeing. Of course you are.

You think I'm lacking commitment or focus. That's so not the case. You're just being a pain in my ass.

I'm sorry, Blog. Don't cry. I'll compromise.

Starting today, I'll visit you no less than once a week. I will talk about whatever comes to mind. (This might be hurtful, but we'll survive.) I'll carry this through November's end, when I'll reevaluate our relationship once more.